There was a gloomy chill about it.

Lucile seemed ready to cry, and showed a repressed perturbation quite unexpected of her; while, try as she would, Frona could not call upon her usual sympathy to drive away the coldness which obtruded intangibly between them.

This, in turn, had a consequent effect on Vance, and gave a certain distance to his manner which forced him out of touch even with the colonel.
Colonel Trethaway seemed to have thrown twenty years off his erect shoulders, and the discrepancy in the match which Frona had felt vanished as she looked at him.

"He has lived the years well," she thought, and prompted mysteriously, almost with vague apprehension she turned her eyes to Corliss.

But if the groom had thrown off twenty years, Vance was not a whit behind.